'Huge variation' in Covid-19 death rates across England

New data suggests that there is a wide disparity in coronavirus mortality rates in English hospitals.

Data seen by the Guardian shows that one hospital trust in south-west England had a death rate from the disease of 80 per cent, while in one London trust it was just 12.5 per cent.

The figures, compiled by NHS England but never published, show the age-standarised mortality rates that all of the country’s 135 acute hospital trusts have recorded during the pandemic. Doctors regard age as the single biggest predictor or risk factor for dying from coronavirus.

The figures cover the period from the start of the coronavirus crisis in March, through its peak in late March and April, up until 15 May, by which time 42,850 – or 85 per cent – of the 50,219 deaths so far in all settings had occurred in England and Wales.

Senior doctors, including Nick Scriven, a former president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said the dramatic gap in death rates of 67.5 percentage points between the trusts with the highest and lowest rates was notable and could potentially mean that some hospitals needed to learn lessons from others.

However, doctors have also cautioned that the data does not give a full picture of differential death rates between hospitals because it did not take account of four other key factors for risk of death from coronavirus, namely gender, ethnicity, deprivation and underlying health problems. All four have been found to significantly increase a patient’s chances of dying.